The mousetrap is slammed
September 30, 2022
Late the night before, Vladimir Putin signed decrees recognizing the independence of the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia Regions. I believe this was evidence that the Kremlin is working in an emergency mode without any well-planned plan.
In international relations, the term “independence” refers to state entities, and the principle of “self-determination of peoples” refers to national groups. Kremlin lawyers did not have time to decide which way to go, and the occupied territories did not have time to transform themselves into self-proclaimed state entities following the example of the Donetsk and Luhansk Regions—as a result, the text of the decree mentioned “the people of the Zaporizhia/Kherson region” and “regions” were recognized as independent without saying their statehood.
I agree with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov that the Russian leader’s speech at the ceremony of signing “agreements on the admission to Russia of the Donetsk People’s Republic, the Lugansk People’s Republic, the Zaporizhzhia Region, and the Kherson Region” was “voluminous.” But I would add that it was low-key.
Once again, Vladimir Putin talked about his phantom pain caused by the collapse of the USSR.
In 1991... the representatives of the party elites of the time decided on the collapse of the USSR, and people found themselves separated from their homeland overnight. It tore and split our national unity alive and became a national catastrophe.
That the war in Ukraine was started not by Russia, but by the West, which has long dreamed of destroying the great state.
Then, in 1991, the West expected that Russia would no longer recover from such upheavals and would further collapse on its own... But Russia held on, revived, strengthened, and regained its rightful place in the world. At the same time, the West has been looking for a new chance to strike us, to weaken and destroy Russia, as they have always dreamed, to fragment our state, to drive people against each other, to condemn them to poverty and extinction. They can’t get enough of the fact that there is such a great, massive country in the world, with its territory, natural riches, and resources, with people who can’t and will never live according to someone else’s bidding.
... in greed, in the intention to preserve their unconstrained power are the real reasons for the hybrid warfare that the “collective West” is waging against Russia. They do not wish us freedom but want to see us as a colony. They do not enjoy equal cooperation but robbery. They want to see us not as a free society but as a crowd of soulless enslaved people.
That the West wants to bring Russia and the rest of the world to its knees and that this is the continuation of the colonial policy by new means—by technological domination.
The West is ready to cross over anything to maintain the neocolonial system, which allows it to parasitize, and, in fact, to rob the world at the expense of the dollar power and technological diktat, to collect the authentic tribute from humanity, to extract the primary source of unearned wealth, the hegemonic rent. The preservation of this rent is their key, genuine, and self-serving motive. This is why total de-sovereignization is in their interests.
That Russia intends to defend its integrity and independence by all available means
We will defend our land with all the forces and means at our disposal and will do everything in our power to ensure the safety of our people.
The only “innovation” connected with the events of the past few days was the direct accusation by Western countries of the bombing of the Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines.
The Anglo-Saxons have had enough of sanctions; they have turned to sabotage—unbelievable but true—by blowing up the international gas pipelines of Nord Stream, which run under the Baltic Sea; they have actually started destroying the European energy infrastructure. It is evident to everyone who benefits from this. The one who benefits, of course, did so.
Without explicitly stating that Russia intends to continue the war of aggression in Ukraine, Putin placed all responsibility for the continuation of hostilities on Ukraine, which “refuses to go to peace talks,” while stressing that “we will not give back what we took today.”
I want the Kyiv authorities and their real masters in the West to hear me, and I want everyone to remember this: People living in Luhansk and Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia become our citizens forever. We call on the Kyiv regime to immediately cease fire, all hostilities, the war it unleashed back in 2014, and return to the negotiating table. We are ready for this; it has been said many times. But the choice of the people in Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson will not be discussed, it has been made, and Russia will not betray it... Only this can be the way to peace.
I don’t know how Vladimir Putin sees his future, but from my point of view, he has driven himself into a mousetrap from which there is no way out. As recently as yesterday, he could have ordered the Russian army to withdraw from Ukraine and begun negotiating a settlement with the rest of the world. Today, such an order would mean withdrawal from the territories that the Russian dictator has already declared his own forever—i.e., it would be an admission of defeat and mistakes on his part. Putin has turned this war into an endless one for himself. This war will end only with his departure from power.